Week at a Glance

Thank you for all of your hard work this week. You are making a difference in the lives of our students and I am honored to work alongside you.

In recent weeks there have been Bend-La Pine teachers that have had Webex meetings disrupted by students not in their class. Changes are coming to the way in which students log on to Webex to prevent this from happening in the future. Keep an eye out for an email from Tech Services with more details in the coming days. These are some of the planned adjustments:

Here is a page on the district website you may wish to bookmark. It has a simple and clear metric chart that highlights the individual metrics per week, as well as the potential first day we could return in a Hybrid format.

Limited In Person Instruction (LIPI) is off to a great start. We are continuing to focus on serving students who are not able to or are not participating in CDL. If you have a student in your classroom that is not able to participate in CDL and you would like to host them in your classroom from 8:30-10:30 please let Lybe or I know.

Safety Team notes from Tuesday can be located here.

Elementary Schools have been working with Paul Dean on options for Halloween costume events for students and families. We have been given guidelines to follow for these events and are planning to have two optional Halloweenish style of events you may wish to consider.

1. Schedule a material pick-up on either Thursday, October 29th or before 12:00 on October 30th and encourage students to wear their costumes. Once on campus (either the front or back lot) they can stroll through the Lava Ridge Costume Walk and at the end pick-up a piece of candy and their learning materials.
2. Join the Lava Ridge Costume Walk on Friday, October 30th between 12:30-3:00. While the specific details of this are still coming together, in general, classes will be scheduled for a 30 minute window, and students will be invited to come to school and go through the Lava Ridge Costume Walk and receive a piece of candy.

Please email Lybe and I if you are interested in either of these events.

Update: The conference calendar changes were communicated to all Bend-La Pine families last week in a weekly update from the school district. We will be reminding families about this next week in our weekly communication home.

Each fall, SELCO awards grants of up to $1,000 to K-12 educators at schools throughout Oregon. If you have a creative classroom idea they would love to hear about it. This year’s application period is now open and runs through October 31. Visit selco.org/SPARK to learn more.

On Monday we will have a small number of students begin Limited In Person Instruction (LIPI). This group will be on campus from 8:30-10:30 daily.

New Webex features: If you didn’t hear, some new WebEx features were recently released. The biggest feature was the addition of breakout rooms – this is a great way to engage students in classroom discussions. Lots of resources and tutorials about WebEx can be found via this link.

On Thursday, Paul Dean (COVID Safety Coordinator) and Sarah Barclay (BEA) joined Nurse Michelle, Mike, Lybe and I for a building walk-through and discussion of our return to school safety plan. The discussion focused on the systems we will have in place for when students return in the hybrid model, Mike’s creative hallway traffic flow design, and disinfection/air cleaning protocols.

Bend-La Pine Schools has developed this flowchart to assist in helping with different COVID related questions and concerns.

Thank you for always wearing your face mask unless you are working alone in your area/classroom. Please let me know if you have any questions about the new Bend-La Pine Restrictions on Face Shield Use guidelines. Here again are the exceptions and the information from the CDC website the Bend-La Pine Safety Team used in this decision.

The next Safety Team meeting is on Tuesday at 1:00 in the Media Center.

Keep up the great work! I spoke with a parent this week that shared her appreciation for the small groups her child has each day. She expressed her thanks not only for the instruction but more importantly she said, the social and emotional value it has for her child being able to interact each day with her teacher and a small group of her classmates. I know you are working hard with your daily small groups and I want you to know your work is appreciated. Thank you.

Bend-La Pine Schools recently posted a doc entitled, Ready Set Learn that contains lots of information and guidance for staff and families related to COVID. This content was referenced during the Town Hall on Monday and also at our Staff Meeting. Please take some time to read this document.

Below are the Comprehensive Distance Learning docs by grade-level bands:

K-1 Schedule

2-3 Schedule

4-5 Schedule

Minutes from the Safety Team Meeting are here.

Our first fire drill of the year went, well, fair. This was our first time using the information from the check-in/check-out (QR Code) system to determine which adults were in the building at the time of the drill and needed to be accounted for. Using this information we had 5 adults we could not locate at the end of the drill. If this had been a real emergency our next step would have been to try and locate each of these people. We do drills to practice and learn what we need to grow and our biggest takeaway from this drill is the importance of completing the COVID google doc each arrival and departure from Lava Ridge. Thank you!

On Monday we will begin Limited In Person Instruction (LIPI) for a small group of students. On October 12th, we are planning to expand this group to include even more Lions that are not attending or able to participate in CDL (some due to a disability). These groups will be on campus from 8:30-10:30 and we will add additional students as we can. I really appreciate the hard work of the team that has worked to launch LIPI at Lava Ridge. With very limited personnel available to support these students, this team is considering every detail from who greets students when they get off the bus, safety protocols, supervision, and of course the instructional planning. Thank you.

We will have a full Staff Meeting on Wednesday at 1:00. For those wishing to meet in person we will be in the Media Center. The meeting can be accessed via Lybe’s personal room too.

We will be hosting another drop-in session for questions on Tuesday @ 2:00. These sessions are open to everyone and will be in the Media Center.

K-2 iPads should arrive in the next couple of days. Students who have not yet received an iPad this year will receive one soon. Once they are here we will get apps downloaded as quick as possible and deliver to teachers. Students who have already been issued an iPad will continue to use the machine they have.

Here is an additional link to Julie Walker’s K-3rd Transition to Hybrid doc

On Monday, September 28, Lora Nordquist is hosting a K-3 Hybrid Staff Town Hall Meeting Start Time – 4:00 p.m. Meeting Access:

As you are setting up your classroom for hybrid instruction please let Lybe or I know if we can assist in anyway or help with questions. Below are some pictures from classrooms at other prototypical schools. Be thinking lots of space for movement, arranging students so they are seated 6 feet apart, and moving non-essential items to the area outside your classroom.

When schools have questions related to COVID they reach out to Paul Dean in TLC. Below is a copy and paste from a resource page that was shared with principals recently.

Thank you for everything you have done to get this school year off to a great start for our students and families. Your hard work and extra efforts have brought many smiles to the faces of our students. 🙂

Staff Updates: Thank you to those who assisted with interviews for our educational assistant positions. The team selected the finalists below for these positions:

The upcoming instructional schedule is below. K-3 teachers can find more details in the Recommendations Leading up to Hybrid Model in K-3 from Julie Walker

To make sure we are ready to welcome students back safely on October 5th we began work on a number of items, some are listed below:

Here we go! Thank you for your hard work, energy, and positivity over the last couple of weeks getting ready to officially launch the school year on Monday. It has been a busy couple of weeks with lots of information, news, and updates coming our way and I appreciate the way everyone has worked together with this extra-busy start.

Monday we begin our phone conferences with families. Here again is the list of recommended questions. Thank you for being sure to ask if families have a device at home that can connect to the internet and about connectivity (Kindle Fires and Chromebooks are not reliable devices for WebEx, Dreambox, and Lexia.)  Student and family needs can be entered into this google doc: CDL Student and Family Needs.

Our welcome video turned out fantastic! We will be sharing this via Facebook and will email to families on Monday. Thank you Rachel and Sarah for putting this together!

Recording Lessons – During Comprehensive Distance Learning, you may elect to record lessons. After consulting with legal counsel, student voice, student image, and student name are ALLOWED to be recorded and uploaded/shared within your Google classroom or Seesaw classroom. So you may, if you choose, record the first lesson launch you deliver live (in Webex), save that recording to your desktop then upload it to Google Classroom or Seesaw. Keep in mind that recordings on Webex can not be viewed for 24 hours

Below is a list of our scheduled material distribution events:

PE and Music Update: During CDL students will follow the links below to access PE and Music. Miriam is sending this information out to families and please also attach to Clever pages.

Mrs. Schendel’s Virtual Music Classroom

Mr. Roberts’ Virtual P.E. Classroom

From Julie Walker: All student Lexia accounts have been reset and all students will retake the autoplacement test. Here is some verbage you may want to share with families:  Lexia is new and up-to-date with additional levels for the 20-21 year. You may review some work that you’ve seen before in Core5 – this is to make sure you are strong and confident with these reading skills. The extra practice may help you move faster through the levels as you work through the program!

Staffing Updates:

–Stacey Purtzer will be teaching 1st grade this year. As we discussed at our first staff meeting, with smaller than anticipated kindergarten enrollment we needed to shift a teacher to 1st grade to meet student enrollment needs at that grade. Thank you Stacey for your positivity and spirit with this adjustment.

–Melissa Merritt will be joining the ICCL Team. Melissa brings previous experience in this role from her tenure at La Pine Elementary School.

On Monday, Nutrition Services will begin serving free lunch and breakfast to anyone 18 years and younger from 11:30-12:45 in the courtyard between Friendship Mountain and Eagle’s Nest. Nutrition Services will be welcoming students in through the gate on the south playground and will follow signs to the courtyard. Students will be able to pick-up both lunch and breakfast.

Thank you for following the No Visitors on Campus guidelines from Superintendent Nordquist.

Limited In-Person Instruction ( LIPI  ) begins in Bend-La Pine Schools on September 28th. Details on phase 1 & 2 below. Initially for Lava Ridge, this means we will be able to conduct in-person evaluations for ELL and Special Education students. We have not received information about phase 2 yet.

Thank you for the birthday wishes and gift. I feel so fortunate to get to work alongside each of you everyday. 🙂

Communicating with each other. My prediction is that most of you have email in boxes that look something like mine: filled to overflowing. One way that we can all support each other is to remember a few key practices:

• If you have a question and you don’t know where to direct it, send it to Lybe or I rather than sending it out into the email stratosphere (sending it to all Lava Ridge Staff)
• If you receive an email from a colleague and you have a question, clarification, disagreement, etc. Please DO NOT “REPLY ALL.” Reply only to the sender.
• If you are sending a long email with anything but information (emotion, arguments, etc.) delete the email. Then make the time to discuss the issues you addressed in the email. In person is best, but the phone or webex can work, as well.

Bend Parks and Rec Childcare: BPRD’s childcare begins on September 16th and will be located in the gym and in the Friendship Mountain commons. Bend Parks and Rec continues to have a reciprocal use agreement with Bend-La Pine schools and will be using our building throughout the year. While some BPRD programs take place in schools, they follow different State of Oregon COVID Guidelines/Metrics for their programs including the child care that will be provided to families this school year.

I am looking forward to seeing certified staff at the Staff Meeting on Tuesday @ 9:00. As you have read, this will be via Webex and you can join remotely, from your classroom, or attend in person in the Media Center (we will limit the group size in the Media Center to 12)

The remainder of September 1st – September 2nd can be used to begin preparing for the first day of Comprehensive Distance Learning with the exception of the time teams are meeting in person with Lybe and I (repost of schedule below)

• September 1st from 12:00-3:00 Kindergarten (Discovery Falls Commons) and 1st Grade (Media Center)
• September 2nd 9:00-12:00 2nd grade (Rainbow Valley Commons) and 3rd grade (Media Center)
• September 2nd 12:30-3:30 4th grade (Rainbow Valley Commons) and 5th grade (Media Center)

I thought it might be useful to see a breakdown of our planned schedule through 9/11. This reflects the information I have received thus far. During times when you are not meeting in person at school/other sites, it is ok to work remotely

• September 3rd- Workday
• September 4th-District Inservice Day for Canvas Course
• September 8th-Workday (or 8/31)
• Septembr 9th-District Inservice Day for Canvas class + Optional District Trainings
• September 10th-9:00 Staff Meeting (this is a change from what I sent yesterday & will be a Webex meeting) + Workday + Open House (schedule out on Tuesday)
• September 11th-Workday

On Tuesday, we will learn more about how we will do Open House this year. The event is on Thursday, September 10 and will involve teachers hosting two, 15 minute Webex sessions for families during the day.

As you return to school please remember that we are required to follow state guidelines related to masking, social distancing, and limiting the number of people in areas. Below is the starters list of how these guidelines pertain to Lava Ridge. We will go into more details on Tuesday.

• Please wear your face mask when you are not in your classroom or office
• Please maintain a 6 ft distance between yourself and others
• Limit the Staff Room and Workroom to one person at a time.
• The areas by Amber’s desk needs to be limited to a total of 4 people at a time.

Classroom set-up – Classrooms do not need to be set up by the first day of school. During Comprehensive Distance Learning you will have the choice whether to teach from your classroom or remotely. An announcement will be made on October 12th whether we will be able to begin a hybrid schedule at the end of October.

We have had some changes within our staff in the last week. These are below:

• Congratulations to Dyan Sultzer who will be an instructional technology coach for Bend-La Pine Schools this year.
• Katie Van Horn will be teaching 5th grade this year.
• Jill Evans-Koehler has decided to take a leave of absence for this school year

The Bend La-Pine School’s Remote Learning Tools is still available and continues to be updated

Here is a new tool that shows county metrics for opening schools to in-person learning. It will be updated every Wednesday.

Please join me in welcoming Katie Gillem to our faculty. Katie will be one of our Special Education teachers this year. Katie has been an elementary special education teacher in Pendleton since 2015 and is in the process of relocating to Bend. Katie will be teaching in the position originally accepted by Charlie Beavis who decided to not relocate to Bend in July.

Bend La Pine Schools will not be posting supply lists or asking for school supply donations this year. The amount of money schools receive per pupil has been slightly adjusted in lieu of this. Some of these dollars will be used for the purchase of math and ELA kits that will be sent home to help support Comprehenive Distance Learning.  

As we anticipated, our student enrollment is fluctuating greatly week to week as families make schooling decisions and enroll after moving here this summer. With the later start to the school year we are planning to continue to see enrollment swings through the week of Labor Day and will not finalize class lists until September 10.

Without the ability to do an in-person Open House, work has been happening to make sure that we still have an opportunity to begin building strong relationships with students and families at the start of the school year. With Comprehensive Distance Learning this is more important then ever. Here is our plan:

• The morning of Thursday, September 10th all Lava Ridge families will receive an email from their child’s teacher welcoming them to their class with a welcome video from the teacher. Staff will have a script of ideas to follow and we will work on this during inservice days. We will not be publicly posting class lists this year.
• The afternoon of September 10th teachers will host virtual Open Houses via Webex. We are developing a schedule for this event and may flex our work hours as we have done before with Open House.

First week back for certified staff: Our first certified staff meeting will be September 1st at 9:00 via Webex. You can participate in this meeting on campus or remotely.

During this week Lybe and I will also be meeting with teams at the times/locations below. Teachers will need laptops and headphones for these sessions:

• September 1st from 12:00-3:00 Kindergarten (Discovery Falls Commons) and 1st Grade (Media Center)
• September 2nd 9:00-12:00 2nd grade (Rainbow Valley Commons) and 3rd grade (Media Center)
• September 2nd 12:30-3:30 4th grade (Rainbow Valley Commons) and 5th grade (Media Center)

At this point, these are the only meetings we are planning for the weeek of August 31-September 4. Certified Staff will also meet for 2 hours on September 9th on campus (locations TBD)

Educational Assistant First Day: September 8th will be the first day work day for educational assistants.

Dear Lava Ridge Staff,

I hope you are doing well and enjoying the summer. Like everything during the pandemic, this summer has been a bit different at the DeFrang house, but with lemons you might as well make lemonade, right? We maximized our time together with local trips to lakes and the river, completed house projects (finally got the fence re-stained!) and appreciated the opportunity to slow down and be together as a family.

As we head into this school year and all of the unknowns we will experience I feel so fortunate to be able to work alongside each of you to serve our students and families. In the weeks since returning to school I have been inspired by the positive vibe in the building and everyone’s spirit. For those who have returned to school you have likely noticed that Mike and Gordon have Lava Ridge looking like new and that Miriam and Amber have the office up and running ahead of schedule. Speaking of the office, don’t be surprised if you receive an email from Mrs. Hawkins-this is our recently married Lybe. Congratulations Mrs. Hawkins!

With a month to go until the first day of school and lots of new information to process I will be starting to send weekly correspondence to you via Week at a Glance. This year you can count on me to send you weekly notes via this blog and ask that you give the information contained a deep read with the goal of us all being well informed of what is happening at Lava Ridge and in Bend-La Pine. Please also count on some spelling and grammatical errors and an occasional try at some humor. 🙂

Staff First Week Back: Some of our inservice time (ie. meeting/training time) will be in person (socially distanced and masked) and some via Webex. Wednesday, Lybe and I will be attending the administrative welcome back and will be learning more about the schedule for September 1-September 11. I will have more details to share with you next week.

This year, our district is working on developing a common elementary school schedule and teaching standards of practice in order to support a more uniform roll-out of Comprehensive Distance Learning. Although we don’t have final materials to share at this point, they will be coming within the next two weeks. This work is being informed by community and staff feedback, as well as input from BEA, the school board, and teacher leadership teams. This schedule outlines teaching times as well as teaching expectations and teaching tools that allow our district to align with state guidelines/requirements.  Opportunities to learn more about these standards of practice and ask questions about them will be provided shortly after they are released.

Technology Updates…

The work flow and communication platforms we are using at different grade levels are below:

• K-2: SeeSaw (we have the premium version 🙂 )  John Craft is working on a website with support videos and documentation for teachers and parents.
• 3-5: Google Classroom.  

Bend-La Pine Schools is planning to provide an iPad for k-2 students and families that do not have a device in September. The district submitted an order recently for devices and are working on a distribution plan. We are hopeful they will arrive prior to September 14 and I will keep you posted on details as I receive them.

The name of our Webex website has changed. The new URL is: https://bls.webex.com/

On July 1, your G Suite (Google) address changed from [email protected] to your regular email address ([email protected]). If you are signed into Google services with your Bend-La Pine Schools account, you may have to sign-in again.

Got questions? Feel free to stop by my office or give me a call at 541-355-2402.

Take care,

Gary